Biography

Born: August 29, 1955; Buenos Aires, Argentina

Bernarda Fink had considerable local success in Argentina before beginning to achieve international attention as a mezzo-soprano in the late 1990s.

She was born to a Slovenian family in Buenos Aires. The family had musical talent: Two younger siblings--Marko (who has sung Arturo in Lucia di Lamermoor) and Veronika (at the turn of the millenium beginning her career at the opera in Ljubljana)--are also singers.

Bernarda beganRead more musical and vocal studies at the Instituto Superior de Arte, a school associated with the Teatro Colón, South America's leading opera house, where she frequently appeared. Other Argentine venues where she sang during these formative years were the Festivales Musicales de Buenos Aires.

In 1985 she won the country's Nuevas Voces Liricas (New Lyrical Voices) Competition, leading to her moving to Europe where she began a notable concert career. She has appeared with the Vienna Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Czech Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the French Radio Philharmonic, the French National Orchestra, the Orchestra of Suisse Romande, Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New Japan Philharmonic. She also sings with chamber and original instrument groups such as I Solisti Veneti, the English Baroque Soloists, Les Musiciens du Louvre, and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

She is also an active recital singer, including an appearance at the New York Festival of Song in Carnegie Hall.

She established her operatic career with the Grand Théâtre of Geneva. While living in that city she married Valentin Inzko, a Slovenian diplomat. (She is, therefore, sometimes booked as Bernarda Fink-Inzko). She jokes that between his diplomatic postings and her world-wide touring the couple have a "Gypsy existence."